


Another

by BlackCanine



Series: Almighty Bloody Chemistry [6]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCanine/pseuds/BlackCanine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy is being an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place through episodes 4.01 "Growing Pains" and 4.02 "Memorial".
> 
> I do not own _The Vampire Diaries_ or any of its characters. There is no profit gained from writing or publishing this story.

“Jeremy,” Alaric’s ghost speaks breaking the silence in the room. Jeremy looks up from the couch where Kol still has his arm around his shoulder. “You haven’t seen Elena, have you?” Alaric asks him and Jeremy wants to punch him in the face.

“What do you mean I…?” he begins.

“I mean her ghost,” Alaric cuts him off to clarify.

“N-no, I haven’t?” Jeremy replies.

“What’s going on?” Kol asks curiously, staring at the air behind the couch.

“Alaric wants to know if I’ve seen Elena’s ghost,” Jeremy explains.

“Not everyone becomes a ghost,” Kol reminds him.

“Elena wouldn’t just move on, she wouldn’t just take off knowing the mess that’s left here,” Jeremy states.

“Well, you’re thinking of her and she’s not here, so she either moved on or she’s somewhere else,” Kol says irritated, wondering if his brother would even care enough to haunt Jeremy and pass along a goodbye message or something. Of course he wouldn’t, the selfish bastard.

“Jeremy! She was at the hospital earlier today,” Alaric remembers all of a sudden, “with Meredith!” he adds and Jeremy’s eyes grow wide.

“Meredith!” he exclaims.

“Meredith? The doctor chick? What does she have to do with anything?” Kol asks.

“She treated Elena today at the hospital after she fainted. She cures her patients with vampire blood,” Jeremy explains alarmed, hoping with all his might that the dreadful suspicion that’s growing in his gut is not true. He looks up at Alaric with pleading eyes and can tell his late mentor has arrived to the same conclusion. Alaric can remember now everything he did while being overcome by darkness and he distinctly recalls getting rid of Meredith’s secret stash once he got her alone after she discharged Elena from the hospital.

“You mean Elena is a vampire now?” Kol asks.

“She’s not here, she should be here. If Elena died, the first thing she’d do would be find me,” Jeremy mumbles, more to himself than to Kol, still trying to find a hole in his theory. All hope of that is gone when there’s a knock on the door.

“That’s Stefan,” Kol tells him.

“You think you should…?” Jeremy begins.

“He can probably hear my heartbeat from outside,” Kol shrugs as Jeremy stands up to get the door. The doorbell rings a couple of times and there’s another loud knock before Jeremy can get there. When he opens the door, sure enough, there’s Stefan carrying Elena’s unconscious body.

“She fell off Wickery Bridge in Matt’s truck,” Stefan explains desperately as he carries Elena’s body inside the house, “she had vampire blood inside her.”

“I know,” Jeremy says.

“You know?” Stefan asks quizzical, then looks up from Elena to find Kol standing in the living room. “What is he doing here? Jeremy, what’s going on?”

“I invited him in,” Jeremy states, ignoring Stefan’s worried face, “what are we going to do now?” he says gesturing at Elena’s body.

“You know how it is. She’s gonna wake up, she’ll feed with human blood and become a vampire,” Damon voice says with a grim tone and Jeremy and Stefan turn around to find him standing outside the house.

“You don’t know she’ll make that choice, Damon,” Stefan says, with a clear warning implied in his voice, which Damon dismisses as he walks inside the Gilbert house. He stops on his tracks when he sees Kol.

“What are you doing here?” he spits with disdain.

“I invited him in!” Jeremy repeats annoyed. “Can we focus on Elena, please?”

Damon doesn’t take his eyes off of Kol as he approaches his brother. Suddenly, Elena opens her eyes and gasps for air.

“Elena!” Jeremy shouts. Elena looks around the living room confused before locking eyes with Stefan.

“Stefan?” she asks weakly before losing consciousness again.

“We have to lay her down,” Stefan decides as he heads for the stairs.

“I’ll go with you,” Jeremy says behind Stefan. Kol attempts to follow him before Damon steps in his way.

“Family matter, I’m sure you understand,” he tells Kol with a condescending smile.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Kol assures him.

“Good, then leave,” Damon demands.

“I am not leaving until Jeremy asks me to and you better not think you can kick me out of this house, baby vamp,” Kol threatens baring his fangs. Jeremy’s steps down the stairs make them both look up.

“She’s on her bed now,” he says, “how long ‘till she wakes up?”

“A few hours,” Damon answers, not minding the question was clearly aimed at Kol.

“Stefan wants to talk to you,” Jeremy tells Damon.

“No he doesn’t, I would’ve heard him,” Damon says with a smirk, “but I can take a hint. I’ll be upstairs and you,” he adds getting on Jeremy’s face, “are a very, very stupid little boy.”

When Damon leaves them alone, Jeremy still hasn’t moved from his spot at the stairs. He looks at Kol with a silent, horrified look.

“She’s going to become a vampire,” he says at last, devastated and disgusted.

“You don’t know that,” Kol offers with a soft voice, “she could choose not to.”

“She’s a survivor,” Jeremy says, “she might sacrifice her life all the time but at the end of the day she fights to live. She’ll fight to live.”

“I’m sorry this happened,” Kol tells him sincerely.

“I know.”

“But take it from someone who just lost a brother today. Vampire sister is better than no sister.”

“I know,” Jeremy repeats unconvincingly.

“Speaking of your brother,” Damon says reappearing on the stairs, “why are we alive? I thought he was the origin of our bloodline, or was that a lie?”

“He was,” Kol confirms, “he’s the one who turned Mary Porter back in the day. I don’t know why you’re alive.”

“Are you thinking of him right now?” Jeremy asks him.

“Yes,” Kol replies with an implied “duh”.

“I thought maybe we could ask him why, though I doubt his ghost will be prone to conversation,” Jeremy explains.

“It’s a two-way street, Jere,” Kol reminds him, “we pull, he pushes. He’s not pushing. He’s probably creeping over that blonde he fancied so much,” Kol says with a bitter chuckle.

 

Damon leaves them short after. He’s got something to take care of, preferably before Elena wakes up. He still makes sure Stefan keeps an eye on Kol.

“He’s going to bury me,” Alaric explains before disappearing and Jeremy feels his eyes filling with tears again. He lets out a frustrated groan and punches the kitchen wall with his bare fist, drawing blood on his knuckles.

“Hey, mate, what’s wrong?” Kol asks embracing his lover, but Jeremy struggles away from him and kicks the kitchen table, tears running down his cheeks.

“Why does everyone keep dying on me?” he sobs as Kol holds him. Jeremy tries to get free but Kol doesn’t let him. Jeremy futilely punches Kol’s chest and arms until he settle down in the end and lets Kol comfort him.

 

Elena wakes up again, just for a couple of seconds before passing out. Jeremy runs to her room as soon as Kol informs him he can hear her state changing upstairs, but he’s too late. When he arrives, his sister is unconscious again. Stefan is kneeling down by the bed, watching over her.

“She’s still out?” Jeremy asks.

“She drifts in and out, I expect her to keep at it for a while longer,” Stefan explains and Jeremy falls silent by his side.

“How did you know?” Stefan asks him. “When I first got here you said you knew what had happened. How?”

“Alaric showed up.”

“You spoke to Alaric?”

“The real Alaric, our Alaric. He asked me if I could see Elena. When I didn’t, he figured it out,” Jeremy explains.

“Why is Kol here, Jeremy?”

“I think you know why by now,” Jeremy replies irritated, not wanting to say something that will make Stefan judge him without understanding.

“After everything he did to you…” Stefan starts but Jeremy cuts him off.

“You mean befriending me and sleeping with me without telling me he’s a vampire? ‘Cause you never did that to Elena, right?” Jeremy retorts, “You forget, I read her journal.”

“He tried to kill Damon.”

“He didn’t, he only kicked his ass. Not exactly a novelty.” This makes Stefan pinch the bridge of his nose and close his eyes, resigned.

“I just hope you don’t regret this, Jeremy.”

“The only thing I’ll regret is that one of you decides he’s too dangerous for me and kill him like you did with Vicki and my uncle John did with Anna,” Jeremy spits furiously, “so how about this time you stay the fuck out of it?” he barks and storms out of the room muttering something that sounds a lot like “fucking vampires”.

 

Bonnie calls Jeremy to tell him about the plea she made to the spirits to bring him back from the dead months ago. When he returns, he finds Elena looking at herself in her bedroom mirror. She’s rubbing her gums and poking at them. Jeremy can remember Vicki babbling about feeling something in her gums back when she was transitioning and, as he watches Elena stare at her lamp with a nauseated look he can only hate the way he must watch this happen over and over again. Elena’s voice brings him back from his clouded memories of that time.

“Jere!” she exclaims as she runs to embrace him.

“Are you okay?” Jeremy asks, “I watched Vicki go through this. She was a mess, her emotions were all over the place, all these old memories came flooding back.”

Elena doesn’t seem to play much attention to him, as the light bulb of her lamp keeps distracting her.

“I’m fine, I’m not Vicki,” she says finally.

“No, you’re not. You’re you. You act like everything’s okay so no one worries about you, but you need help,” Jeremy tells her.

“I said I’m fine, okay?” Elena snaps and Jeremy flinches. “I-I’m sorry. I… Have you talked to Bonnie?” she asks him apologetically.

“Yeah, she said when I was shot, she made a plea to the witch spirits to bring me back and they listened.”

“Yeah, but the consequences were horrible,” Elena reminds him.

“And what could be more horrible than you turning into a vampire? I need my sister, not another one of them!” Jeremy exclaims, being the one to snap this time.

“We’re gonna find a way out of this. Everything’s gonna be okay,” she tries to reassure him, without much success.

“I hope so,” Jeremy tells her sincerely before leaving. As he walks down the stairs, he can hear the faint noise of a light bulb crashing and Jeremy closes his eyes in despair and quickens his pace. His grief is interrupted by the sound of the front door shutting close. Jeremy steps out of the house to find Kol walking away.

“Kol!” Jeremy shouts. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving you alone. You certainly don’t need another one of us to bother you,” Kol shouts without looking back at Jeremy.

“Kol, please, wait. I didn’t mean it like that,” Jeremy says as he tries to catch up to Kol.

“Then how did you mean it, Jere? ‘Cause there are not that many ways to interpret what you just said,” Kol spits angrily turning around to face Jeremy.

“I don’t want this for Elena!” Jeremy yells. “Kol, I feel for you and I care about you, but I don’t want that life for my sister!”

“Nobody wishes it on anybody, but back there it didn’t sound like you were feeling for Elena, it sounded like you were making all this about you. Poor little Jeremy, with everyone he knows being a bloodthirsty monster. You want your life without vampires, dear? Go back to fucking Denver!” Kol barks at him before turning around and stomping away.

“Kol, wait!” Jeremy calls, but the street is empty and Kol can’t be bothered to walk anymore: he speeds away from the Gilbert house. When Jeremy gets back inside, he leans on the closed door and hits the back of his head against it, eyes closed. He opens them to find Rose’s ghost sitting on the stairs.

“You really are an idiot,” she tells him.

“Great,” Jeremy mumbles, slamming the back of his head against the door again.

“How can you get into bed with a vampire if you hate them so much?” Rose asks him.

“I don’t ha… I just… I don’t even know,” he admits.

“Never mind that, your sister needs you. And if she becomes a vampire, she’ll need you even more,” Rose lectures him.

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do. Do you know what happens when vampires cut all ties with their human life?” Rose asks. “They shut their humanity down.”

“Did you do that?” Jeremy inquires.

“For a while,” Rose shrugs, “but at least I had my brother with me to bring me back. Elena will need human contact and I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but your closest circle of friends is starting to lack human representation. And, most of all, she’ll need her brother.”

“I know that!” Jeremy snaps.

“Jere?” Elena asks from the top of the stairs, “who are you talking to?”

Jeremy lets out an exasperated sigh.

“With Rose,” he admits at last.

“Rose is here?” Elena says surprised and Jeremy nods.

“Tell her I say hi and that I’m sorry for what happened to her,” Rose tells Jeremy.

“She says hi and that she’s sorry,” Jeremy relays.

“Thank you, Rose,” Elena says to the air between her and her brother.

“And tell her I am still rooting for her and Damon,” Rose jokes but Jeremy ignores her.

“Was that Kol leaving the house just now?” Elena asks confused.

“Yes,” Jeremy replies.

“But why?”

“’This isn’t awkward at all,” Rose intervenes standing up, “tell Elena I wish her good luck, and stop being an idiot to Kol and your sister,” she orders him before vanishing away.

“Jeremy, why was Kol inside the house?”

“Because I’m…” Jeremy starts. He then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Because I’m seeing him.”

“Seeing him as in….? Oh, my God, Jeremy, you can’t be serious.”

“What? You can date a vampire but I can’t?” Jeremy accuses.

“He’s an Original, Jeremy! He broke Matt’s hand, he tried to kill us in Kansas.”

“He wasn’t going to kill us. And let’s not talk about how many Stefan and Damon have killed, ‘cause I actually am on that list!” Jeremy snaps, realizing too late it’s probably not a good idea to provoke a transitioning vampire.

“Jeremy!” Elena exclaims half worried, half disappointed, half scared to death for her brother’s life.

The door opens and Stefan walks inside the house.

“Bonnie called, she wants you to meet her at her ancestors’ old house,” he tells Jeremy, “she might have found a way to help Elena,” he explains as he looks at Jeremy and Elena and notices the obvious tension between them.

“Is everything okay?” he asks cautiously.

“Did you know about Jeremy and Kol?” Elena asks angrily.

“I just learned last night.”

“I can’t deal with this right now,” Elena says furious.

“Great, then don’t,” Jeremy says before heading out the front door. When he’s gone, Elena turns at Stefan with pleading eyes.

“He’s an Original, Stefan, I don’t want Jeremy near him.”

“I know. We’ll deal with that after we help you. Now, come down, I’ll make you something to eat,” Stefan says as he offers his arm to her.

 

It’s useless, it all is. Bonnie can’t bring Elena back from the dead and she becomes the one thing she never wanted to be: a vampire. She’s still Elena in a way, if how she nearly bit Damon’s throat to protect Matt is anything to go by, but in another way, she’s not Elena anymore.

“She’s still your sister,” Rose reminds Jeremy for the second time that day when he gets back to his house, trying to unsee the image of Tyler nearly ripping his own heart out while possessed by Klaus. The ghostly figure is sitting on the back of the couch as if she could actually sit on furniture.

“You are going to have to invite her in,” she continues, “but before you do that, you should come to terms with what’s happened.”

“I know,” Jeremy says and Rose looks at him with sympathy.

 

Elena and Stefan watch their first sunrise after Elena became a creature of the night. Lapis lazuli ring firmly set on her right ring finger, the couple welcomes the first of many mornings to come. It’s later that morning when Elena gets back to the Gilbert house. The one place in the world she always felt safe at, her home. And now she could easily be kept outside if Jeremy wanted to.

“Still sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Stefan had asked her before she left the boarding house.

“I need to do this on my own. Jeremy and I need to work this on our own,” was Elena’s only explanation.

All her newly acquired vampire strength can’t make her body stop from trembling when she knocks on the door. Elena can hear Jeremy’s heartbeat at the kitchen and she can tell her brother doesn’t move from where he’s standing by the counter. She can hear his pulse quicken and she knows his feet are still firmly planted on the ground, but she doesn’t knock again. She waits until Jeremy gathers all the strength he can muster and slowly walks across the living room to open the door. He does so halfway and stares at Elena with a pained look.

“Jeremy…” Elena begins but doesn’t know what to say next. I’m sorry? This doesn’t change anything? Can I come in? All words die in her mouth. At last, Jeremy inhales deeply and opens the door a little wider.

“Would you come in, Elena?” he asks with a soft voice and Elena doesn’t walk in, she tackles her brother and embraces him in a bone crushing hug, which Jeremy reciprocates.

“You’re my sister, Elena,” he tells her, lips brushing her hair, “that’s never gonna change.” And Elena truly wants to believe it.

 

Jeremy sits at the kitchen counter while Elena makes coffee. It’s not exactly what she’s craving for right now and Jeremy definitely doesn’t need to get even more hooked on caffeine at his age, but she needs to keep herself busy. The silence is heavy in the room as they both avoid the topic that weighs over them. At last Jeremy sighs and decides to rip the proverbial band-aid.

“Just say it, Elena, I know there’s a million things you wanna say to me right now.”

“He’s an Original,” she says curtly as she reaches for a couple of coffee mugs.

“I care for him,” Jeremy states.

“After everything?” Elena asks him.

“After what? After everything his brother has done to us and our friends? You can’t hold that over Kol. You certainly don’t hold that over Elijah.”

“Kol’s been on Klaus’ side all this time. He threatened to kill you if Bonnie didn’t undo the spell that linked the Originals together,” she reminds him as she hands him a mug.

“Klaus threatened Bonnie. I don’t believe Kol would’ve gone through with it if it had come to that,” Jeremy argues.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Elena falls silent and takes a sip of her coffee. It’s her first human food after she finished her transition and the way she can pick up every single taste of the beverage amazes her. Hidden layers she hadn’t known were there, slowly dissolving as they give place to others. Would it always be this way? Feeling everything, from the taste of coffee to concern for her brother’s wellbeing so intensely magnified? She isn’t sure she can handle that. The taste of her drink overwhelms her so much she doesn’t feel Jeremy placing his hand on top of her own. She startles and comes back from her caffeine induced rush to look at Jeremy, who’s staring at her with wide, vulnerable, yet determined eyes.

“It’s gonna be alright, Elena,” he tells her, and she knows he’s not talking about Kol, or about him, but about everything. And maybe it’s the way she perceives everything so amplified now, but Jeremy’s soft confidence makes her believe it. For now.

 

Jeremy knocks on the front door of the Mikaelson house. Kol doesn’t answer until after the third time he does so.

“What do you want, Jeremy?” he asks annoyed.

“To apologize. Can I come in?”

“You’re not a vampire, you don’t have to ask,” Kol spits, “it’s so great not to be a vampire, isn’t it?” he snarks as he pushes the door wide open for Jeremy and walks inside the house.

“I’m sorry I said that. Come on, Kol,” Jeremy pleads as he follows the vampire inside the mansion, “look at me.”

Kol slowly turns around to meet Jeremy’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy repeats as he closes the distance between him and Kol. The vampire just nods and Jeremy places a hand on the older man’s shoulder. Kol hesitates for a moment before leaning down and placing a soft kiss on Jeremy lips. Before Kol can pull away, Jeremy grabs his head and kisses him deeply. When they break apart, both of their pupils are blown wide, their eyes filled with wonder.

“I’m glad you finally stopped being an idiot,” a feminine voice says. Jeremy turns around to find Rose casually leaning on one of the walls and rolls his eyes.

 

The Mikaelson mansion is empty now except for Kol. Rebekah moved out and Klaus’ things are almost packed. Jeremy is careful never to be at the house when the hybrid is around, but of course Klaus knows. He hasn’t said a thing about what Kol and Jeremy have going on yet, and Kol thinks Klaus doesn’t care. He’s never really given a damn about his siblings lives. Well, maybe not never. Klaus cared once, they all cared once. Still, Kol doesn’t wanna make a show of being with Jeremy, like he usually did with the fleeting conquest he’s had across the centuries, because he knows Klaus will suddenly notice the relationship his brother has with the human kid the minute he needs something from them and decides he must to apply duress on somebody.

But Klaus hasn’t been around lately, so Jeremy and Kol get to spend the night at the mansion. They don’t do much, except keeping each other company and talking about the irony of having mourned the deaths of their siblings merely two nights before, only to get them back and losing them again in some way or another: Elena stopped being human and Klaus is leaving anyways, like he always does.

“There’s a memorial happening today,” Jeremy informs Kol, “for the ones that died at the Young farm.”

“You mean the council members who nearly got all the people you care about killed?” Kol clarifies.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I grew up among all of those people, I even looked up to some of them.”

“Well, some role models you had,” Kol snickers and Jeremy glares at him. Kol laughs.

“You’re such a human,” he says at last.

“Are you insulting me?”

“No, no, on the contrary. It’s just that you care. All of you. Elena, Matt. You care and you mourn and sometimes I try to remember what that was like.”

“You mourned Klaus,” Jeremy reminds him, “and Finn, I suppose,” but Kol snorts. “You don’t care he died?” Jeremy asks him.

“He wanted to die!” Kol argues. “He hated being a vampire and now he isn’t one. I hadn’t spoken to him for like nine hundred years and he wanted to die!” he repeats incapable of wrapping his mind around the idea of Finn actually wanting to end his life.

“You don’t miss him?” Jeremy inquires.

“I… I don’t know, Jere. Since I became a vampire Rebekah has been my closest sibling. We have so much in common, my baby sister and I: kids left astray to fend for themselves and escape an abusive father and a psychotic brother. Elijah’s always lived in a different moral plane and the only thing I could do to survive was turn everything off. If I didn’t care, then I wouldn’t interfere with Klaus, and I’d get to stay undaggered. Love is a weakness my brother always exploits.”

Jeremy suddenly understands why all Kol did after Finn died was beating Damon up, who hadn’t even been responsible, but he never went after Matt, and when Klaus died, he actually cried and mourned: the only person holding him back from feeling and caring was gone. With Klaus no longer around he could let himself be vulnerable.

“You know, when I was human, Finn was my favorite. I looked up to him, I had this kind of hero worship thing going on for him,” Kol confesses.

“What happened?” Jeremy asks.

“We became monsters and he loathed himself. I took it as an offense because the thing he hated about himself was the thing we all were and couldn’t change. To me it was like he hated us all and I hated him for it.”

“You still do?”

“No. I came to terms with it a long time ago. I can’t go around hating people forever, or I’ll turn into Klaus, or my father. But I refuse to mourn a man who wanted to die. I just won’t,” he declares firmly.

“Maybe you should,” Jeremy suggests softly.

“I won’t,” Kol repeats.

 

The memorial turns out to be like every single town event of lately: full of death, danger and blood. April nearly gets killed, Elena nearly loses it and Tyler gets shot and sent to the hospital, which makes Jeremy and Matt speculate about how they’re gonna cover that up. A heavily tattooed dude asks Matt about the wound on his neck. “Girlfriend went a little overboard,” is all he answers and Jeremy wonders if his friend still carries a torch.

Stefan calls them later that night and makes them deal with everything they’ve been pushing away. He hardly brings them up since their ghosts left, because he knows most of his friends could hardly stand them, but he allows himself to finally mourn Vicki and Anna in a healthy way. One that doesn’t involve drug abuse or suicide attempts.

 

Jeremy visits the Mikaelson house before heading home. There are no signs of Klaus and somehow the mansion looks bigger and emptier now. When Kol opens the door, Jeremy offers him a lantern and a lighter. He lights it up and hands it to Kol.

“This is for Finn,” he says softly. Kol doesn’t react at first but in the end he takes the lantern and sets it free.

“For Finn,” he repeats and they both watch the lantern fly up in the night sky, Kol trying to let go of his deep-rooted perceptions of humanity and love and Jeremy letting go of his pain and anger to accept two more vampires into his life. But isn’t that what these lanterns stand for? Letting go?


End file.
